16
3. Mounting the pickup cartridge
Mount the pick-up cartridge to the slots in the headshell.
While doing this basic work it is recommended to leave
the stylus-guard attached in order to avoid that the deli-
cate stylus and cantilever are damaged while mounting
the cartridge.
You can mount any pick-up cartridge with standard 1/2-
inch fixing holes using the respective hardware supplied.
Carefully and with the help of tweezers, attach the pins of
the cartridge to the tonearm's internal wiring as follows:
red right channel (R)
green ground of right channel (RG)
white left channel (L)
blue ground of left channel (LG)
For the time being do not tighten the headshell screws.
One should be able to gradually slide the cartridge smooth-
ly back and forth along the headshell slots. Fine-adjusting
and fixing the cartridge is done after having determined the
final tone arm height.
Please note: if pick-up cartridges from GRADO are going to
be employed we recommend to fix the cartridge with the
supplied screws "upside down". This means that the screw
is inserted from underneath through the holes of cartridge
and headshell whereby the nuts fix the screws on top of the
headshell. This may perhaps look not very elegant, yet it
saves you a lot of fumbling for the nuts and trying to get
them onto the screws. It's because the nuts supplied with
GRADO cartridges are simply a tad too large to fit neatly
between cartridge body and screws.
4. Tonearm height adjustment (VTA)
If you have acquired your TD 350 with a factory-installed
pickup cartridge you can disregard this chapter and pro-
ceed to chapter 7.
If not you should now continue with adjusting the tone-
arm height. Put a record on the platter and lower the sty-
lus. After the cartridge is in playing position view it from
the side and check if the tonearm is aligned parallel to
the record. If this is not the case the tone arm height
needs to be re-adjusted.
VTA is the abbreviation for vertical tracking angle. The VTA
facility is used for an easy alignment of the tonearm paral-
lel to the record, irrespective of the size of the pick-up car-
tridge. It's a known fact that the tonearm should always be
parallel to the record after the stylus has set in the groove.
However, owing to the often different dimensions or
heights of pick-up cartridges among each other this goal
can hardly be achieved every time. The VTA alignment faci-
lity developed by THORENS uses a clamp mechanism
which surrounds the tonearm's main post at its base (pic-
ture 7). This provides a secure and very stable attachment
